Crisis at the National Archives

Shocking.

In the middle of directing the difficult task of transferring the historically important records of the Obama administration into the National Archives, the archivist in charge, David Ferriero, ran into a serious problem: A lot of key records are missing.

A first-rate librarian, Ferriero has been driving a much-needed digital overhaul and expansion of the National Archives over the nine years of his appointment. This will greatly improve the ability of digital search locally and remotely, as well as accessing the files themselves.

To support this effort, in 2014 President Obama signed the Presidential and Federal Records Act Amendments. For the first time electronic government records were placed under the 1950 Federal Records Act. The new law also included updates clarifying "the responsibilities of federal government officials when using non-government email systems" and empowering "the National Archives to safeguard original and classified records from unauthorized removal.” Additionally, it gives the Archivist of the United States the final authority in determining just what is a government record.

And yet the accumulation of recent congressional testimony has made it clear that the Obama administration itself engaged in the wholesale destruction and “loss” of tens of thousands of government records covered under the act as well as the intentional evasion of the government records recording system by engaging in private email exchanges. So far, former President Obama, former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, former Attorney General Lynch and several EPA officials have been named as offenders. The IRS suffered record “losses” as well. Former federal prosecutor Andrew McCarthy called it “an unauthorized private communications system for official business for the patent purpose of defeating federal record-keeping and disclosure laws.”

Clearly, America’s National Archives is facing the first major challenge to its historic role in preserving the records of the United States. What good is the National Archives administering a presidential library, like the planned Obama library in Chicago, if it is missing critical records of interest to scholars? And what’s to prevent evasion of the entire federal records system by subsequent administrations to suit current politics rather than serve scholars for centuries to come?

The archive sensibly only collects a fraction of the federal records for its permanent archive. That number varies between 2 percent and 5 percent of the total. That can be a good thing, according to historian Arthur Herman. “In studying a bureaucracy, too much evidence may be a greater danger than too little,” he said. “The amount of material often seems to be inversely proportionate to the value of its evidence.”

And kind of odd - when I check David Ferriero (the stated library director - Twitter feed), nothing on this story.

Will wait to see what really happened before jumping to conclusion based on one report. Could of just been a techincial error on the Obama's administration part since they just started transferring the documents over to electrical records in 2014, And not finding much "info" for the author of this article either. What is his background?

Meanwhile - Trump is tearing up all his documents, then fired the guys in charge of taping them back together and didn't see any conservative "outrage" over that.

Do you have more to add besides, "shocking". I would agree it's "shocking".

Is this required (by law) to turn over all those documents? If not, then... meh. If so, then who destroyed them by who's orders? Is this a Congressional Investigation or AG?

In the OP.

So far, former President Obama, former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, former Attorney General Lynch and several EPA officials have been named as offenders. The IRS suffered record “losses” as well. Former federal prosecutor Andrew McCarthy called it “an unauthorized private communications system for official business for the patent purpose of defeating federal record-keeping and disclosure laws.”

And from the article as well.

Now the National Archives is faced with Hillary Clinton’s history-making assault on government records while secretary of state, which Cass describes as fitting a pattern of “destroy, deny and corrupt the process.” (This is no doubt why Harvard just awarded her the Radcliffe Medal citing her “transformative impact on society.”)

How does David Ferriero plan to deal with this unique challenge to his institution? First, it’s not just his problem, although he must address the realities of gaps in the record and how it will affect plans for the new Obama presidential library. But will there be penalties for violating the 2014 law? Is it even possible to continue the great tradition of maintaining an authentic record center for the United States that President Franklin Roosevelt founded 83 years ago, if that law is not supported?